An abandon rate is an important metric to a contact center since it measures how many calls are hang ups before being serviced. The abandon rate is typically calculated as a percentage of total inbound calls from customers where a customer hangs up prior to speaking to an agent. Wait times affect the abandon rate, as customers are more likely to abandon a call when a wait is too long. High abandon rates lead to customer dissatisfaction and loss of potential revenue.
To operate most efficiently, the contact center needs to use all of the information available when routing contacts to agents. In addition to matching a contact to the best possible agent based on the needs of the customer, the contact center should take into account how likely it is that the contact will abandon. However, the traditional abandon rate calculation has serious limitations. In current systems, abandon rates are calculated at a skill or queue level. However, with agent selection work assignment, the notion of a queue may not be useful for predicting wait time. For example, there may not be traditional skills with which calls and agents are associated, and call A may be handled before a different call B that entered the system earlier.
Calculated abandon rates are rates at which things have already happened. If the abandon rate is calculated right now, it applies to calls that entered the system at some time in the past and possibly at very different times. The calculated abandon rate does not tell how likely it is that a call that enters the system right now will abandon at some point in the future. The abandon rate also does not tell how likely it is that a call will abandon given that it has already been in the system for a certain amount of time.
If a communication system is to take potential abandonment into account when routing, the communication system needs to know how likely a customer is to abandon given that the customer has already been waiting for five minutes. Some customers are more patient than others. For example, it is well known that people in the Northeast United States are much less patient than people in the Midwest United States. In addition, the communication system may have past history for the customer that enables the communication system to predict the customer's patience.
Different calls have different costs associated with abandonment and with waiting. For example, having a sales call abandon may incur a much higher cost (lost revenue) than having a service call abandon. Also, even if a call does not abandon, there is a cost associated with making a caller wait, in terms of loss of good will.